When a song cycle drawn from Brenda Ueland’s 1938 autobiography ME was suggested to me by Bruce Carlson, director of the Schubert Club of St. Paul, I was challenged to draw conclusions about this perplexing woman and make musical sense of her life. Ueland lived most of her life near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was a woman of fiery, if not disciplined, personality. Like her heroes -- Ibsen, Van Gogh, and Blake—she had a passion for daily life and found a vitality and essence in the hours of a day. She was rhapsodic about walking, passionate about the sky, moon, and stars, and instilled a reverent sense of dignified passion and art in what some toss-pots and cynics might call “ordinary life.” Her biography is not particularly different from anyone else’s biography, consisting of those events which seem insignificant (a first memory, a first dance, a period of youthful rebellion, a walk with a beloved parent) but are really the most important things that happen to us in life. These are the experiences which form our substance. Ueland’s gist is to conform in us the true art into which we are all born, the art of living. In the eight songs comprising ME (Brenda Ueland), I have chosen episodes which capture Brenda’s passion, lyricism, optimism, and buccaneer spirit. “Memento vivere” was her motto—“Remember to live.” I have tried to share her motto with you.